The Viatores Quartet is a young string quartet based in Berlin, founded in 2023 at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin. It is made up of Louisa Staples and Johannes Brzoska, violins; Miguel Erlich, viola; and Umut Sağlam, cello. Its name comes from the Latin term viatores, “travellers”, and reflects the different origins and cultures of its four members, united by a shared artistic project.
In 2024, it won the First Prize and a Special Prize at the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Competition. This recognition was followed by the Second Prize at the Irene Steels-Wilsing String Quartet Competition in Heidelberg in 2025 and two special prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in London that same year. More recently, the quartet received the DC Anderson Foundation Family Prize and the Career Development Prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition.
The ensemble has performed at venues and festivals such as the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, Villa Musica, AIMA Festival in Turkey, London’s St Luke’s Music Society, and the SWR Television Tower Stuttgart. In 2024, it was selected as SWR New Talent, a three-year artistic development programme run by Germany’s public broadcaster, and subsequently secured a residency at Paris’s ProQuartet – Centre Européen de Musique de Chambre for the 2025–2027 seasons. In February 2026, it released its debut album.
The Viatores Quartet currently studies with Oliver Wille at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, and between 2023 and 2025 worked with Tabea Zimmermann at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt. Throughout its career, it has also received artistic guidance from musicians such as Christian Tetzlaff, Nora Chastain, Heime Müller, Mark Steinberg and Areta Zhulla.